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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25015162">Bring You Back To Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/liveandlove1989/pseuds/liveandlove1989'>liveandlove1989</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Last of Us</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Heartache, Not Canon Compliant, Sad with a Happy Ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:14:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,637</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25015162</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/liveandlove1989/pseuds/liveandlove1989</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"She keeps watching the front windows. Tells herself it's nothing, she isn't waiting. Won't wait. She's just so tired of feeling afraid. </p>
<p>She told Ellie. She can't do this again."</p>
<p>Angst with a happy ending. To help alleviate the pain I'm feeling from having my heart brutally cut out and stomped. Dina's perspective.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>206</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Bring You Back To Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The morning after, Dina wakens from a fitful sleep to the sound of JJ crying. It's a miracle she slept at all, really. Instinctively she reaches out a hand, runs fingertips over the emptiness beside her and jerks back like the sheets burn. In reality, they're cool. Ruffled from the body that was once there, now gone. Her throat closes in on itself as she forces herself up to tend to her baby. </p>
<p>The rest of the morning sees her on autopilot. Shower, breakfast, tending the sheep. JJ keeps crying and she knows it's because he knows; maybe not the whole situation, but he can sense her grief. Revels in it just as surely as she does.</p>
<p>She keeps watching the front windows. Tells herself it's nothing, she isn't waiting. Won't wait. She's just so tired of feeling afraid, like Seattle, like forcing herself just to stay awake because Ellie will be back soon, she has to be, but what if she isn't, or what if <em>they</em> know where she is right now, or -.</p>
<p>She told Ellie. She can't do this again.</p>
<hr/>
<p>It's the nights that are hardest. Four days in and it takes hours to rock JJ asleep, takes hours of tossing and turning and silently sobbing into a pillow that's already losing Ellie's scent just to sleep herself. But when she closes her eyes she hears the echoing silence of loneliness pressing into her, feels eyes watching her in the dark and can't stop the shaking. What little rest she does manage drains into sluggish melancholy when she drags herself to the crib, then to chores. </p>
<p>She tries watching a movie instead of doing laundry because touching anything right now that was Ellie's pitches her heart down into her stomach. But sitting on their couch alone feels pretty much the same.</p>
<hr/>
<p>She catches sight of Ellie's guitar as she leaves the bathroom. It's enough to break her.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Tommy comes by around week two. He's sober for once and looks guilty but Dina can't stop her own heartache long enough to care. She screams at him. Doesn't hear anything past the ringing in her ears, but the look on his face when she says Ellie's gone - the look of anguished disbelief and crippled worry - make the punch she throws stagger off into a shaky wail. </p>
<p>She drops to her knees on the hardwood of the porch and Tommy manuevers as best he can to hold her and she doesn't push him away. Just goes limp and sobs against his shoulder and hates him. Hates Ellie. Hates herself for believing they every really stood a chance.</p>
<hr/>
<p>When word gets around she gets more visitors. Tommy doesn't come back but Maria does. Hands off dishes and letters and asks what's needed. Sometimes stays long enough to round up the sheep. Does the laundry that's been building up for too long. Subtly shifts the conversations towards maybe returning to Jackson.</p>
<p>Dina won't. <em>Can't</em>. If she leaves that means it's done. Really over. It would be too much like saying Ellie is dead. Like there's no chance she'll come back.</p>
<p>But it's getting harder. She barely sleeps. Can't listen to any of the records without crying. Can't go into Ellie's art room without feeling cold. Can't sing to JJ without hearing <em>her</em> voice and choking up and upsetting him more. </p>
<p>The farm she'd dreamed of for years, the house they'd painstakingly pieced together into a home, is suddenly filled with ghosts. Memories that got stuck in the corners and now worm their way into the cracks along her heart.</p>
<hr/>
<p>It's a month before Dina gathers the nerve to take out one of Ellie's flannels from their shared closet. She's been mocked for so long by the sight of it that when she musters up the courage to touch it, to feel the rough realness of it beneath her fingers, she almost laughs. Almost. Wonders what a sorry sight she must appear as she slips it on and brings it to her nose and inhales until her lungs burn. </p>
<p>She can't bear to take it off for three straight days.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Robin makes an unexpected visit a few days later. Dina realizes almost as soon as she opens the door why - neither of his grandparents have seen JJ since before Ellie left, when they'd made arrangements for monthly visits. Guilt claws at her but Robin doesn't accuse. Just gives her that same look that Maria did, silent sympathy, and over the next few hours she pours her soul out to him. </p>
<p>Even before, with the on again off again tangle that she and Jesse had weaved around themselves, his parents had always welcomed her in. And though she was grateful for Maria, it just wasn't the same.</p>
<p>Robin listens, silent. Let's her cry herself out and makes them both tea as she sags into a chair at the kitchen table. Then sits across from her and asks, very gingerly, if she thinks it's healthy staying at the farmhouse.</p>
<p>No. She doesn't. But it was never about healthy, or even smart. She's done so many stupid things in the name of love that to start thinking clearly now seems the more foolish option. </p>
<p>But she doesn't tell him this. Gives one of the countless excuses she's made over the last few weeks, and even though it's obvious he doesn't buy it he also doesn't argue. They both know it would be pointless.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Things slowly get easier. The monotony of day to day life bleeds through the pain until most days are fine. Dina still can't sing, or dance in the kitchen, but she closes the door to Ellie's room and washes the flannel and doesn't ache as deeply when she passes by that one unused mug. </p>
<p>She makes it out to Jackson for supplies and stops in to let JJ be spoiled by his grandparents and talks to a few of the people she'd grown to call friends over the years. No one ever says <em>her </em>name, but she'd have to be oblivious to miss the undertones. </p>
<p>It weighs on her, that pity. To the point where it just tires her and by mid afternoon she's leaving. </p>
<p>She almost makes it.</p>
<p>But as she takes the shorter route out of town that winds down around the backside, she crosses the cemetary. JJ is on her hip and had he not been she might have wondered in entranced. As it stands she just pauses. Thinks of Jesse. Of Joel.</p>
<p>Of Ellie. </p>
<p>Screws up her face and curses under her breathe because no. <em>No. </em></p>
<p>She can't stop herself from having a small breakdown on the ride back home.</p>
<hr/>
<p>It's three months. <em>Three months </em>and she doesn't think she's had a single full night of sleep. She feels it, deep in her bones. Maria had commented on her weight loss this last visit and she swears she isn't starving herself on purpose. Sometimes she just forgets to eat.</p>
<p>It's getting late and she's herding in the sheep and JJ is cooing and clapping and making it really hard to not accidentally drop him as she parades the animals into the barn for the night. She makes a face when he looks back at her and it makes him laugh and she smiles because it took so long for him to get back here, happy. Even with her less than stellar attitude most days.</p>
<p>They make their way back into the house after and she's preparing his dinner as he chews and drools on one of the seemingly endless toys he's been gifted at the table. </p>
<p>When, very quietly, there's a knock. </p>
<p>And she freezes. </p>
<p>Her hands still and her breath hitches because maybe, <em>maybe, </em>and maybe has been just enough and not good enough for so agonizingly long that the thought that it could be sends her into a quiet sort of panic. </p>
<p>But it's short lived, because of course it's not. Maria has a habit of coming over unannounced and there's nothing different about this evening and she's just getting her hopes up. She's so tired of watching them be dashed against the wall.</p>
<p>Reaching for a hand towel, she wipes her palms and gently scratches JJ's back as she passes him and makes her way through the front of the house. Can't stop herself from glancing out the window but can't see anyone from this angle so reaches for the door knob.</p>
<p>Twists. Tugs.</p>
<p>Comes face to face with a ghost.</p>
<p>Her breath catches again, but this time with cause.</p>
<p>Ellie is thinner, so much thinner. She's hunched and her clothes are ragged and there's dirt and who knows what clinging to her and there are new scars across her face and her eyes -.</p>
<p>Dina's lungs hurt when she finally breaths. Ellie looks at her and there's this sort of broken, bruised earnestness to her gaze. Like she's laying herself bare. </p>
<p>When it registers, really registers, so many feelings happen all at once. She wants to scream. To laugh. To cry. To pull Ellie in by the shirt collar and kiss her stupid. To slam the door and listen to her beg. </p>
<p>She wants so many things, and all of them ache. So she settles on stepping out onto the porch. Feels her lips pull up at the corners.</p>
<p>Ellie doesn't say anything. Just swallows and ducks her head, waits. Dina reaches out, slowly, hesitantly. Has to touch her, <em>has to, </em>to know she's real. Her fingers catch on the backpack strap. </p>
<p>She sucks in a whimper and takes another step and blinks, realizes she's crying.</p>
<p>Ellie is so fragile when her arms wrap round the girl, all bone and flushed, sticky skin. Dina presses herself as hard against her as she dares, feels Ellie slowly hug back. She breathes in and-.</p>
<p>"Welcome home."</p>
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